those days where everything shone brighter
by starry eyed dreamer6
Summary: One girl clings to the past, one tries to forget, one runs away, and one is trapped. / Or, it's been ten years, and a lot has changed, but they haven't.
1. Chapter 1

/

Ten years later, and they're lost, but not _really._

Aria's doing what she - claims to - love best. Reading. Because she's always been the artsy one, the one who read classics and went to poetry slams and _literally_ wore art. And now she's working at a prestigious publishing company and reading is part of her work and she should love it, but she doesn't. In fact, sometimes she really hates it, like when her head hurts reading these awful stories people send in and then she finds one she loves and her boss tosses it away like it's trash. _It won't appeal to our market,_ he says, but Aria wonders why it should matter because it's good - like really good - and the author deserves to have it published.

But she doesn't protest - she's heard the stories about the girl who did - and tries not to look disappointed.

(She's not sure if she succeeds, because she kind of feels perpetually disappointed these days.)

She takes one more look at the almost-book to find out who to address the rejection letter to before she freezes. The last name is Fitz and she doesn't want to look at the first because she's scared it's going to start with an E, so she hands it to her assistant and hurries away.

She tells Hanna later and she's met with, "Were you worried it was him, or that it wasn't?" She doesn't reply, because she still remembers. Very clearly, in fact.

The warm hand holding hers, the soft look in his brown eyes. The '_I'll never leave you's'_ and the tear dripping down his cheek when he finally does.

The clicking of the phone gets her attention, she's only offended that Hanna hung up on her for a second before she gets another call.

It's from her boss, asking her to work overtime because _there's a manuscript here I think you'll really like_ and _remember, if it's really good you'll be the one to get the credit!_

She says yes because it's not like she has anything else to do or that she's been working overtime for half of the year or because she can't keep a boyfriend and has no social life, but because she hopes that this one will have Ezra Fitz written neatly at the bottom of it. (Don't tell anyone, but she'd totally do it anyway too.)

Slowly, she's starting to think that she really hates reading.

x.

Hanna's in the big city - yes New York, duh - and she tells herself she loves it. Instead of being the shining star she's always wanted to be, she's busy making dreams come true for everyone else….as a wedding planner.

It's hard and annoying when she hates the bride but it's all worth it when she's invited to the wedding and gets to see them on the 'happiest day of their lives'. Most of the time it isn't, but she ignores that, just like she ignores the fact that half of them are divorced by the time the year's up.

This is New York City, where people are rash and sleep too little and love too much, so it's not like she's surprised or anything.

She isn't married - she goes through boys like she used to go through food - and she doesn't want to be. She has tons of friends, most of whom are either men, gay, or happily married because she's stolen more than one boyfriend in her time - what? they're cute - and she pretends she doesn't care that she hasn't heard from Emily in ten years and she kind of hates her life.

She's fun and bubbly and happy and free until one day her friend says she's looking 'bloaty' - she just barely stops herself from saying 'That isn't a word.' like Spencer used to - and she realizes this she hasn't had her period for two months and her bra is definitely tight, which, now that she thinks about it, is also probably why guys seemed to be more attracted to her lately.

She buys a pregnancy test and the young, dark-haired teenage cashier looks at her weird when she sees that there isn't a ring on her finger, and she wants to tell her to mind her own freaking business but she isn't a teenager anymore and she's learnt how to hold her temper in. Well, _kind of_.

She tries not to cry when the stick has a bright pink plus sign and she doesn't even know who the father is, but she can't help letting out a few tears in the disgusting public restroom of the closest fast food restaurant she could find. She wonders when her life started falling apart and remembers how her dreams used to be so much bigger and when she was comfortable in her own skin, instead of having a 'mild eating disorder' and carrying a baby.

She kind of hopes it's a baby girl because all of the boys she's known end up leaving her. But then again, her consciousness reminds her, - she' s kind of surprised she still has one, because it's been a long time since she's done anything _good_ - the girls do too.

x.

Emily's gone. Vanished. Another girl takes her place, someone cooler, prettier, and definitely _not _athletic. She changed her name as soon as she was 18 and far away from Rosewood. Now she's Sabrina Field and she's in Spain and everything seems better there. She cut ties and changed her phone number, and tries to ignore the emails they send her every now and then, because Emily Fields who? Emily was nobody's favorite, and now Sabrina is everyone's.

She's a few years out of nursing school in the US and acts mysterious and guys _and_ girls flock to her. She's fluid like the river, and nothing about her is quite clear, even her sexuality. She moves every year or so because if she stays too long, things get too serious and the first time she did this, she got too attached and cried for weeks after she left. She still has bad memories of the children she left in Haiti. _'Why do you have to go?' they asked_. She had no answer. She still doesn't._  
_

She's glad nurses are needed everywhere, and treats every patient with a smile, whether it's at an army base for a few weeks or a pediatrician's office. She's learned that nothing's permanent, so she tries to do everything she can before she can't anymore.

She thinks she might die young too, because she'd hate it if she were old and wrinkly and needed help dressing and eating. Sometimes she reminds herself of Hanna - sweet but oh-so-silly - but she takes a minute to mediate (she picked that up in a class when she was in Japan) and forgets that her name is made up of _Spencer Aria Hanna_ and reminds herself - no trips down memory lane, though, she doesn't think she could stand it - that she was too serious before and she's just making up for it now.

Wherever she goes she's exotic and new and interesting and she loves how even the people who know her don't, really, and enjoys it while she can.

In Spain, she's happy, and she vows to stay there _just a little bit longer_, in her cute little house with her nice friendly English speaking roommates and a fabulous view and delicious food. Then one day she sees ivory skin and familiar brown wavy hair. It's either Jenna or Spencer - she really hopes it isn't Spencer because she's still at the hospital and god what if she's hurt - and she almost smiles when she sees it's neither but she starts crying in the middle of her shift and she knows she needs help because she's running from her past but turning into it too.

Her clothes, personality, and attitude all scream Alison DiLaurentis and she digs out her passport and leaves the next day to go back home. Well, almost, she's never going back to Rosewood, and probably not even Pennsylvania, but she flies to California and schedules an appointment with the nearest therapist for the day after. When they ask why, she just says 'I need this' and not _I'm turning into my first love and I keep on running but I need help help help help me_.

They'll figure it out soon enough.

x.

Spencer's still in Rosewood. She just started at the law firm her parents work at after graduating from Penn State like every other Hastings. She loves the thrill of winning a case and helping people but she wishes it wasn't in her hometown. People still look at her and whisper, about how she was the girl who cried wolf, how she went to Radley, how she was the friend of the famous unresolved murder case. Stares follow her everywhere, and, while it makes for good business, her parents expect perfection and those years in college - away from everything - were her favorite.

The memories of four inseparable girls - or five sometimes, if she thinks way back - follow her everywhere, and the fact that she's living in her parent's barn - it's temporary - doesn't help.

She dreams of lost hope and ambition, back when the stars were almost in her grasp.

Most of the time, though, she remembers the ugly. Four faces frozen in terror, _nobody believing them_, and those days in Radley that jump out at her when her guard's down. Of talking dolls and hospital visits, and funerals - _so many funerals_ - she can't escape.

Want to know a secret? She still cringes every time her phone rings.

She hasn't had a boyfriend in years, and she tries to ignore the pitying stares of _happy joyful breakable_ people with rings on their fingers and empty banks.

They say money can't buy happiness, but Spencer's determined to prove them wrong.

She still talks to Hanna sometimes, but it's mostly Aria she stays in contact with. They were always like two peas in a pod, and even the distance can't keep Spencer from clinging to Aria like she's her only hope. They tell each other everything - well, almost - and somehow Aria always manages to bring up _EzraEzraEzra _in a conversation and Spencer knows she knows how pathetic it is, and whenever she asks Spencer always replies the same because she knows Aria will never come back to confirm it. '_Oh, I haven't seen him since we graduated!' _and _'I don't know where he is now, but I can ask around…If you want?' _She wonders if they sound as fake to Aria as they do to her - _cold, hard, plastic lies _- but Aria never says yes so Spencer knows she's okay - for now.

She doesn't tell her that Ezra's still in town, with Maggie and Malcolm, and how he's one of the people who see a _fallen angel_ whenever their paths cross. (She heard him say those exact words once, when muttering to Maggie, and she can't stop the hard look that appears whenever she sees him after. She may have fallen but she's not a crushed piece of glass you have to hold gingerly, she's a _survivor._)

She doesn't tell Aria that sometimes, just out of spite, she mentions her just to see him flinch - just a little bit - and how whenever Malcolm sees her he asks about 'the girl who played trains with me' but also, not about how he's started to stop.

She's better off not knowing, Spencer tells herself, and it's true. But what's also true is that Spencer isn't quite ready to talk about it either.

Want to know another secret? She doesn't think she ever will be.

/

Four lost little girls. One who clings to the past, one who tries to forget, one who ran away, and one who's trapped.

It'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

_fin._

**My second PLL ****one shot, the idea just came to me a few days ago and I had to write it down. It's meant to be a flow of consciousness from the character, hence the run on sentences and thoughts about another thought. It's a bit different than my usual story writing, but I rather like it.**

**Tell me what you think in a review! Should I add another chapter for the (ex) lovers (Ezra, Caleb, Paige, Toby)?**


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry this took so long to get out. I started writing it the day after I posted the last chapter, but then hit writer's block after Ezra's, and never went back to it until now.**

**The funny thing is, it's longer than the original chapter. I hope you enjoy it, I rather like it. :)**

They're just fragments and bits of the real show, but it doesn't mean they don't have lives.

x.

She likes to think that she's strong. Resilient, too, like a warrior. So, when her swimming dream - and the rest of her life - is crushed to dust, she becomes one.

Well, almost. She's a pilot in the air force - she wanted to _fightfightfight_ but her dad didn't want her to and one look at how damaged her uncle was after he came back convinced her- and it took her two years of training but she loves flying. During missions, she tries to ignore the blood and the weapons and it should be hard to avoid it all but it's surprisingly easy when she doesn't talk to many and cares for none. It stings less that way, when she's made it her mission to ignore, or even loathe, the soldiers that she drops off, but it doesn't lessen the guilt when they don't make it. It's hard enough to focus when the plane's being shot at and she thinks she might lose it if she had someone else to worry about. She's seen more mutilated bodies than she ever thought she would, and she's glad she has an iron stomach because otherwise the airplane would stink of vomit.

She's glad all she has to do is look forward. Forward, where there's no gunfire and no danger. Well, most of the time. Then she can ignore the haunted looks and the wounded. If she can't see it, it isn't there…Right?

She thinks she sees Emily once, at an army base where she's dropped by so her dad can visit - he's pretty much the only family she has left - and she thinks she might be a nurse there, but she sees Emily - well, someone who might be Emily but she's pretty sure Emily could be old and grey and Paige would still see the sparkle in her eyes and know - embrace and kiss one of the soldiers she dropped off recently - he must be hurt or he wouldn't have come back so quick - and she loses her guts and looks around to see her father staring back at her.

Later she thinks he might have seen Emily too, but he doesn't mention it and neither does she, and they pretend that her smile is more genuine and that his hug is more sincere and they're okay. This - awkward touches and cautious looks - is what they are and she's not happy with their strained relationship but she knows he loves her and she'll take what she can get.

After a while - she (usually) doesn't bother to count days so she tries to ignore the fact she _knows_ that it's been 57 - Paige sees the soldier that maybeprobablydid touch her Emily and another soldier asks him about his love life. (She's just glad she didn't have to because she never talks to anyone, especially the guys.) They're - supposed to be - planning strategy because nobody is trying to get killed but she stops and takes a moment to eavesdrop and hears the guy gush on about some girl named Selena or Serena or Sabrina and the personhe's describing is definitely not Emily Fields. She's just glad that it's not Emily because she's always been fragile and war might break her and she's happy but she's also sad because she'll probably never see Emily again and she should be okay with that but she isn't.

Like some stupid classic author had said once. "When a heart breaks it doesn't break even."

It sounds silly and she feels like it too, but that doesn't stop it from being - tragically - true.

x.

Ezra's life is amazing. No illegal relationships, no stalkers, no 'A' teams, no more dead bodies popping up everywhere… Ten years has been good to him, he thinks, before wanting to throw something because what's the point if you don't have someone to share it with? Technically he does, two actually, but his relationship with Maggie has never really been love, just two fools trying to see if they fit - apparently not perfectly, but enough to stay, always enough to stay - and as much as he loves Malcolm, he isn't his son, not really, and he kind of wishes he'd known before priding himself in the similarities between them. He'll never say it, but his heart breaks just a little whenever he sees his son, and he's trying so hard - too hard sometimes, even after 11 years - trying to make himself forget that.

He's working on writing a book, but that's a side job when he isn't teaching enthusiastic - yes he's joking, if they start enthusiastic, they don't stay that way for long - college students. He's dreamt of teaching all his life - he remembered the impact his teachers had on him - and most people think it's admirable, but it's hard, with a lot of work, and he hates it when people skip class and he has to be tough and not nurturing as much as lecturing and he isn't even paid much.

Teaching is a thankless job, he reminds himself, the only reward is the knowledge he instills in students and he loves it but he doesn't, too.

He remembers the days when he used to wake up to sad but sparkling dark brown eyes and sweet secretive smiles and he isn't hung up on her but he misses her light and how he used to start teaching with a smile and a spring in his step when he was with her in the morning. Now, he wakes up to a zombie-like teenager, a busybusy wife, and he's just so tired all the time. If it were anyone else - namely, one of his friends - he'd say he was having a midlife crisis but it's oh-so cliche and he's only 35.

Days drag by like snails and it's a wonder that he isn't older, though, because he feels it.

He doesn't have many friends, he thinks. Colleagues, yes. Acquaintances, in spades. But one of the closest things he has to friends are his old college buddies who stop by every now and then and former student, Spencer Hastings.

They run into each other every now and then, and make awkward chitchat when they grab coffee occasionally but he revels in her.

There's nothing specific, but it's just her on a whole. She hasn't changed in the eight years she's been gone in the slightest. She still wears the same perfume, drives the same car, and, more importantly, she's the only one in the town who knows everything. She still keeps a few secrets that would haunt him if they got out, and while she's a little more broken than before, isn't everyone?

So if he figures out her schedule in order to bump into her more often - alone, without Maggie or Malcolm - it's because he owes her, not because she has always been his favorite student - Aria excluded, of course - and he likes the feeling she gives him that nothing has changed, like he's still 25 and going places.

And if he gets drunk with her one night and tells her all of this? It won't matter, because he's learnt that in Rosewood, secrets don't stay secrets for long.

x.

Caleb hasn't kept in contact with anyone. It's not much of a surprise really, though, because he was only ever close with Hanna and maybe Toby and after he broke it off - to save her - they never talked again. He's moved out of Ravenswood too, that mystery is solved - with a few more corpses - and he doesn't like talking about it.

He's still the deadbeat kid he was before, who 'upgraded' people's technology illegally and lives in a sketchy apartment where there are more rats and bug and creepy noises than he can name. It gets cold in the night - even in the summer, because he just had to move to fucking Vermont- but it's nothing he isn't used to. He met a girl, too. She has silky red locks - no more blondes or brunettes for him - and a bright smile. They've only been together for a few months, and she's nothing like him but she's funny and doesn't look at him like he's a lost puppy so he thinks they might work out. They're already living together, to cut costs for both of them - she's a painter and everyone knows how unreliable that job is - and even if their relationship goes sour he thinks he could get used to having another body next to him, someone to wash the dishes in the sink and make the apartment seem more like a home.

And then he comes home one day and she isn't there and he's kindofsortofpretendingtobe okay because everyone leaves him in the end. What's one more person to add to the list?

(He tries not to think of Hanna because she's the only one who would've been by his side forever - had he asked.)

He knows he shouldn't still be dreaming about her bright smile and eyes and hair - it's been almost ten years he should be (wants to be) over her - but she crops up in his dreams every now and then, and it's better than the nightmares he gets otherwise.

He's a well oiled machine, built with need and desperation, though, so he does what he has always done and pretends that his life is good. He's come across few really bad people in his line of work and can usually beat the more dangerous ones up, but when sharks come after him about the loan his stupid ex-girlfriend took out and he can't escape quickly enough - because that's what he does too, run - and gets beat up, although he gets a few good punches in, too. One of them ends up dead - don't ask him, he may get rough but he's never killed anyone - and he ends up getting blamed.. and this time, there's no one to save him. He gets sentenced for 5 years for 'manslaughter' and it's sad but he can't help but feel relieved that at least he knows he'll have a toilet and food and a place to sleep for the next few years. With his luck, maybe when he dies - young, as all of the weak do - he'll even get a few lines in the Obituaries. But then again, maybe not. He really doesn't care anymore. ( And he can barely remember those days when he did.)

x.

Toby Cavanaugh is 'famous'. Well, in a sense. He's a recurring character on some teenage show about some teenage girls doing some stupid teenage things and he really kind of hates it but he needs bread on the table and if he desperately hopes that one day he'll see a familiar face - Spencer - in the crowd at his appearances, so what? He makes it a stipulation in his contract to be facing the screen when he says words like "I'm sorry." or "I love you." and the directors love the emotion he puts into those scenes - which is partly why his character is such a sap - and he doesn't say anything about it not being because of the script. They wouldn't understand anyway.

He's a model, too, and he likes it better than acting, but it's still not anything like what he'd wanted - wants - to be.

He writes letters, sometimes, in the dark of the night where nobody is looking at him or judging him or reminding him, when he's just another face looking up at the stars - as if, he lives in California and he's lucky if he can see the moon at night - and wishing on them. Sometimes they're to Caleb, or Emily, and even Alison, but mostly to Spencer. They're filled with apologies and regrets, wishes and hopes, and he knows exactly what to say to her - if he ever saw her again, that is - but knows she'd never talk to him in the first place. It's rather sad - and a bit pathetic, mostly pathetic - how his world revolves around her now that she's gone, but if people notice the sadness in his eyes they don't say anything, and he likes it that way.

He fondly remembers days of carpenting and driving trucks and carving wood. Back when his parents didn't get old - they only interact when he sends them money - and his stepsister didn't need him to pay for her eye surgeries. Back when he had a loving girlfriend, not a cheating wife (They love each other, just not enough anymore and both know it). Back when nobody expected anything from him and he wasn't staring into cameras all day, hoping to see someone looking back. But then he remembers how there was also someone going after his girlfriend, and how his parents had hated him, and how he was called a 'murderer', and he wants to go back to Rosewood and shove it all in their faces, because he was finally successful. Then he laughs, too, because he's never going back to that black hole of a town, not if someone paid him. So when he goes back home to his black Lab and wife, he smiles when she says she's pregnant instead of thinking wryly about how it probably isn't his. If he was lying when he said he was happy instead of wanting to escape, so what? It's not like his opinion matters. To anyone. But he looks at the child growing inside of her and promises silently that he'll be better.

Four screwed up people living lives they didn't want. But they're not special, they're just passing thoughts that go wherever the wind takes them.

So when one resents and one regrets and one is alone and one is bitter, it's nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Right?

It might be ironic if it wasn't so true.

**It all kind of came full circle for these guys, and I feel especially bad for Caleb. Honestly, though, could you really see him being a wildly successful guy or anything? His ending was something I always kind of pictured for him. I also like the war theme of Paige's but I don't have any personal experience so I hope i did it justice, and Ezra's refers to Spencer's thoughts in the last chapter a lot ( and clarification, he doesn't have a crush on Spencer ), and Paige's was inspired by a reviewer.**

**Please review and tell me what you think! :)**


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